Christian Life in the Second and Third Centuries

The Lectures on “Christian Life in the Second and Third Centuries" were delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral on the 19th and 26th November and 3rd December 1872.

Taken from "Historical essays" By Joseph Barber Lightfoot, John Reginald Harmer, Alfred Plummer · 1895

Alternative Sources: 1, 2

Lecture 1

On the last three Tuesdays your attention has been directed mainly to the social conditions of present and recent ages. I must ask you now to transfer yourselves in imagination to a period dating sixteen or seventeen centuries back. I offer no apology for thus suddenly shifting the scene. While it is necessary to face the problems of the present, it is not less important to review the experiences of the past. If we can only read them aright, the records of the difficulties, the sufferings, the triumphs of early Christianity are replete with lessons of immediate interest. And in some respects the past may claim a preference over the present. The study of contemporary religion and politics will always exercise the most powerful fascination over our minds; but it is beset with the most serious disadvantages. In the first place, we approach the subject with the blind partiality of men who have taken a distinct side in the conflicts which they are reviewing. In the next, as we are placed in the very midst of the events, our point of view is necessarily confused, and we are incapacitated from estimating correctly their proportions. The individual soldier, who is fighting for his life amid the roar of guns and the flashing of steel, is the last man to give a faithful account of the dispositions and the manoeuvres by which the victory is lost or won. Only when we take up a position aloof from the field of action can we duly appreciate the relations of all the parts in the great battles of history.

In the three lectures which are allotted to me, I purpose dwelling on some aspects of Christian life in the second and third centuries of our era. For the most part my illustrations will be drawn from the period of the hundred and fifty years which followed upon the close of the first century. My starting point, therefore, will be marked in secular history by the accession of the Emperor Trajan, and in ecclesiastical history by the death of the last surviving apostle, St. John; for the two events were nearly coincident. My reason for confining myself to these limits is this. I am anxious to exhibit Christianity as an independent force, working in and by itself, without the aid of any extraneous supports or any peculiar advantages. Thus I exclude, on the one hand, the ages when the special influence and extraordinary inspiration of the Apostles might be thought to exempt the Church from the common experiences of history. And on the other hand, I stop short of the time when, under Constantine, the Church entered into an alliance with the State, and it becomes difficult henceforth to estimate how far its triumphs should be ascribed to its own inherent power, and how far to the support of the civil arm. During the period to which I restrict myself, there is no disturbing element in the calculation. Whatever successes it achieved were due solely to its own vital energy, i.e. to the working of Christian ideas through the Christian society.

And I do not know how I could better strike the keynote to our investigation than by quoting, at the outset, a remarkable description of the early Christians by one of themselves, who appears to have lived close upon the confines of the Apostolic age. The writing from which the extract is taken - the Epistle to Diognetus - is a fragment without a name and without a date, a single page torn out of the vast volume of Christian literature in the second century, which, with a few meagre exceptions, has altogether perished: a mere scrap saved from the ravages of time, like one of those fabled Sibylline leaves, borne fluttering on the winds, coming to us we know not whence, but traced in characters instinct with an energy and a life which is not of the earth.

"Christians," says this anonymous writer, "are not distinguished from the rest of mankind either in territory or in speech or in habits of life. For they neither dwell in cities of their own, nor use any different language, nor practise any strange fashions. But, while they dwell in cities either Greek or barbarian, according to the lot of each man, and observe the local customs in their dress and their food and all their ordinary habits, yet in their own mode of life they exhibit a conception which is marvellous and confessedly unique. They dwell each in his own country, but they dwell there as sojourners. They share every duty as citizens, and they suffer every indignity as foreigners. Every foreign country is a fatherland to them; and every fatherland is foreign to them. They marry, like all men; they beget children, but they do not destroy their offspring. They spread a common table, which yet is not common. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they have their citizenship in heaven. They obey the established laws, and they surpass the laws in their lives. They love all men, and they are persecuted by all. They are unknown, and yet they are condemned. They are put to death, and yet they are made alive. They are paupers, and they make many rich; they lack all things, and they abound in all things; they are dishonoured, and they are glorified in their dishonour; they are calumniated, and they are justified; they are reviled, and they bless; they are insulted, and they respect. Doing good, they are punished as evil-doers; punished, they rejoice as being made alive. By Jews they are assaulted as foreigners; and by Gentiles they are persecuted; and their haters cannot assign the cause of their enmity. In one word - what the soul is in the body, this Christians are in the world. The soul is dispersed through all the members of the body; and Christians throughout the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, but is not of the body; so Christians dwell in the world, and are not of the world. The soul, being invisible, is imprisoned in the body, which is visible. So Christians are perceived to be in the world, but their piety remains invisible. The flesh hates the soul and wars against it, though it suffers no wrong, because it is prevented from enjoying pleasures. So the world hates Christians, though suffering no wrong, because they are opposed to pleasures. The soul loves the flesh and the members which hate it. So Christians love those that hate them. The soul is enclosed in the body, and yet itself sustains the body. So Christians are shut up in the world as in a prison-house, and yet they themselves sustain the world. The soul being immortal dwells in a mortal tabernacle. So Christians sojourn among corruptible things, while they await the incorruption that is in heaven. The soul, by hard fare in meat and drink, becomes better. So Christians, when punished, increase more and more from day to day, so noble is the post which God has assigned to them, and which it is not lawful for them to decline. For, as I said, this is no earthly invention which has been delivered to them, nor is it a plan of human devising which they hold it a duty to guard thus carefully. But in very truth God Himself, the Almighty and All-creative and Invisible, God Himself from heaven planted among men the Truth, and the holy and incomprehensible Word, and established Him in their hearts: not sending to men, as one might imagine, some inferior officer or angel or ruler, or one of those beings who have the guidance of things terrestrial, or of those to whom is committed the administration of the heavens, but the very Artificer and Creator of the Universe, by whom He made the heavens, by whom He enclosed the sea within its proper bounds, whose mysterious ordinances all the celestial bodies faithfully obey... Did He send Him, as any man might conceive, to establish a tyranny, or to inspire fear and alarm? Nay, not so, but in gentleness and meekness. He sent Him as a king sending his son, a king. He sent Him as being God; He sent Him as to men; He sent Him, as saving, as persuading, not as compelling: for compulsion has no place with God. He sent Him, as inviting, not as persecuting; He sent Him in love and not in judgment. For He will send Him in judgment, and who shall abide His presence? Seest thou not how His servants are thrown to wild beasts, that they may deny their Master, and yet do not succumb? Seest thou not, that the greater the number of those punished, the more does the number of the others increase? These things are not like the works of man: they are the power of God; they are tokens of His presence."

I do not know what impression this passage may have made on my hearers; but to myself it seems to embody the very spirit of the Gospel. In its thrilling earnestness and its lofty simplicity, its undaunted courage and its unbounded hope, it presents to us the liveliest picture of the struggles and the aspirations and the victories of Christianity in the early ages. Compare it, if you will, with the noblest utterances of heathen sage or moralist of the time, with the righteous dogmatism of an Epictetus or the plaintive aspirations of a M. Aurelius; you will see at once that it soars into a loftier region than any of these. There is an energy and a vitality in it, a consciousness of strength, a capacity of endurance, and an assurance of triumph, which is wholly different in kind from the religious sentiments of heathendom. And if you ask an explanation of the difference, if you probe the secret of this novel force, you will find the solution to be very simple. The writer himself leaves you in no doubt about this. He does not refer you to the moral precepts of the Gospel, or to the social organization of the Church, or to the philo sophical dogmas of Christianity, but to a Person and a Fact. Not a word is said about any of those five causes which Gibbon parades before his readers when he attempts to account for the unparalleled triumphs of Christianity - the pertinacious zeal of the Christians, and the alluring promises of future bliss, and the miraculous powers claimed by the primitive Church, and the austere morality of the new society, and the efficient discipline of the body. These, so far as they are causes, are only secondary causes; they are not the root and stem, but only the leaves and fruit of the great tree which was to overshadow the earth. The root itself, as this writer conceives it, is the incarnation of the Divine Word, the realization of God's love and God's presence through the human life and death of Christ. Here is the mainspring of this unique energy, the hidden source of this new and vigorous life.

And the life itself? In a few simple and bold touches it is described to us. The description consists of a series of contrasts arising out of the fundamental position of the Christian. The Christian inhabits two worlds, lives two lives. To each of these he has direct obligations. These spheres, however, are not distinct and apart, but constantly intersect and overlap each other; and the great problem which must engage the attention of every conscientious man is how he can harmonize these claims. The conditions of the problem will differ in various states of society; but in some form or other it must always press for solution. It is as fresh to you and to me to-day as it was to any member of this small and persecuted sect more than seventeen centuries ago. But to the early Christian the problem was beset with the most cruel perplexities, from which we happily are free. At every turn the question presented itself, "How am I at once to render to Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's, and to God the things which are God's?" and he must be ready with an immediate practical answer. How he solved the problem it will be my business to show in these lectures.

Keeping this object therefore in view, I think that the history of Christian life in the early centuries may be conveniently treated under three heads. In the time which remains to me this evening, I shall speak of the relations of the Christian to society. Next Tuesday I hope to discuss with you his position as regards the law and the government, or (in modern phrase) the relations of Church and State. And in my third and last lecture, I intend to say something about Christian worship in these primitive times. The first subject has no fixed centre about which it will revolve. The interest of the second will gather about the martyrdoms. The third will be more or less localized in the catacombs.

Following out this plan, and treating this evening of the Christian in relation to society, I shall confine myself to three points, which will be sufficient to occupy my time - the social position, the social difficulties, and the social triumphs of the early Christians.

1. It was a constant taunt of the early antagonists of Christianity, that the new religion did not recruit its ranks from the most exalted or the most intellectual or the most respectable classes of society. The philosopher Celsus, who appears to have written about the middle of the second century, makes it a matter of reproach that the active members of the sect were wool-workers and cobblers and curriers, the most ignorant and boorish of mankind, who were marvellously eloquent in a knot of women or boys or slaves, but had not a word to say for themselves when confronted with sensible men.

The taunt was an old foe with a new face. Long ago the question had been asked, as if the mere asking were sufficient to bar all further inquiry, "Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed?" (John 7:48) And now the language of the Jewish priests is unconsciously echoed by the Gentile sophists: "Have any of the princes, any of the senators, any of the philosophers believed?"

There was just enough foundation, in fact, for this taunt to arm it with a sting. It might not be so true now as it had been a century before, when St. Paul uttered the words that there were not many wise after the flesh, not many powerful, not many noble, either among the teachers or among the disciples of the new sect; yet still its converts would be drawn mainly from the less influential and the less educated classes of society. But what then? Was there any ground for assuming that either wealth or rank or education was a necessary condition of estimating correctly the claims of a religion which professed to disregard all conventional distinctions, and to address itself to man as man? This was not the first time, and it certainly will not have been the last, when the noblest and truest impulses, whether religious or moral, have worked upward from beneath. There was nothing in the social experiences of the high-born and wealthy, or in the technical education of the philosopher or the rhetorician, which peculiarly qualified them for appraising the worth of Christianity. Nay, just so far as the higher classes were removed from the hardest trials of their fellow-men, just so far as convention had chilled and stiffened in them the common instincts of humanity, they were absolutely incapacitated as judges. To mankind at large, with its sorrows and its sufferings, with its consciousness of sin and its aspirations after good, the Gospel message was addressed; and from them it found a ready response.

But, indeed, this was a dangerous weapon for the adversaries of Christianity to wield. It was wrested from their hands and turned with deadly effect against themselves. It had been the proudest achievement of Socrates that he brought down philosophy from the skies to the level of common life. But the Gospel achieved a far greater triumph. "Every Christian mechanic," said Tertullian triumphantly, "has found out God, and can show Him to others"; though Plato said that it was difficult to discover Him, and next to impossible to communicate the discovery when made. This father contemptuously rejects what he calls the illusions of civilization. He turns aside from the training of the schools, and he addresses himself to the primary, unsophisticated, unencrusted consciousness of man: "I summon thee, O Soul, simple and rude and unpolished and unlearned, such as they possess thee who possess thee by thyself, the very real soul in its integrity - from the roadside, from the thoroughfare, from the weaver's shop. I want thine inexperience, since thy poor experience is trusted by none. I ask for just what thou bringest to man, just what thoughts thou hast learnt either from thyself or from thy Creator." "We do not talk great things," wrote Cyprian, "but we live them."

But in fact the allegation of Celsus was not true. If rank and knowledge did not form any special qualification for the acceptance of the Gospel, they did not interpose any serious barrier. Already, when Celsus wrote, the tide was rising, and it became evident that even the highest eminences of intellectual and social life must soon be flooded. Even in the earlier years of the Apostolic age the conversion of a Roman proconsul, Sergius Paulus, was an augury of ultimate victory. Before the first century had run out, a prince and princess of the reigning house, Clemens and Domitilla, the cousins of the Emperor Domitian, suffered for their adherence to the new faith. Soon after, about the year 110, Pliny reports to the Emperor that many "of every rank" were infected with the strange superstition. In the latter half of the second century Irenæus speaks more than once of Christians at the Imperial Court. At the close of the century Marcia, who was all- powerful with the worthless Commodus, seems to have been herself a Christian, and certainly extorted from him many concessions in their favour. About this time Tertullian, writing at Carthage, avows that Christianity had invaded every class of society, and that even official dignity was passing over to its ranks. And twenty or thirty years later, the Emperor Alexander Severus, if not himself a Christian, at least acted with friendly partiality towards the growing sect, while his mother corresponded with the greatest Christian teacher of the day.

Nor was it otherwise with intellectual culture. Already, when Celsus wrote, Christianity was receiving constant recruits from the ranks of philosophy. The Platonist Justin and the Stoic Pantanus, dissatisfied with the hollow professions of their respective sects, had sought and had found in the Gospel satisfaction for their deepest wants. Advance another half-century and the victory is unmistakable. With all his faults of taste and style, Tertullian stands out pre-eminent as the literary genius of his age. His fiery eloquence and his vivid imagination have no rival among his classical contemporaries. After all allowance made for his allegorical subtleties, Origen far outstrips the heathen thinkers of his time. We cannot name any classical author of that age who combines in the same degree the profound insight of the philosopher with the patience and the acumen of the critic.

But, not content with attacking the intellectual capacity and social rank of the Christian converts, Celsus did not spare even their moral antecedents. He urged that others who invited worshippers to initiation in their mysteries, strictly confined their invitation to those who were "clean of hand and wise of speech," who were "pure from all contamination, and whose soul was conscious of no evil, who had lived a good and upright life." On the other hand, the summons of the Christian was the very reverse of all this: "Whosoever is a sinner, who soever is foolish, whosoever is a little child, (in one word) whosoever is a miserable wretch, he shall be received into the kingdom of heaven. "Whom do you mean," he asked, "by the sinner? Why, of course, the dishonest and the thief and the burglar and the poisoner, and the robber of temples and the violater of graves."

This was especially dangerous ground for the assailant of Christianity to occupy. While making the attack he had exposed his own flank, and the opportunity was not lost by the defenders. Wholly unconscious what an advantage he was giving them, he avowed the utter impotence of religion to effect any great moral reformation in a man, and he urged that it was next to impossible to change the character of one who was habituated to evil; and on this ground he objected to the Founder of Christianity that he came to "save sinners," when he ought to have addressed himself to just men. The answer was triumphant. The Christian Apologist could point to hundreds and thousands of men who had been reclaimed from the worst vices by the Gospel, and were now living pure and honest and peaceful and self - denying lives. The bitterest taunt of the assailant was the grandest boast of the Apologist. If, on the other hand, the religion of Celsus could effect no moral reformation, that religion stood self condemned.

2. But whatever might be his condition in life, the Christian found his path beset with practical difficulties. These would doubtless be greater in the higher ranks, and greatest of all in official circles; but the humblest Christian was confronted by them in almost every action of life. It is next to impossible for us to realize the ubiquity, the obtrusiveness, the intrusiveness of polytheism. A spiritual religion from its very nature does not force itself on observation in the same way. Just because it addressed itself to the outward senses, polytheism could not be evaded. All the public offices at Rome were connected with the sanctuary of some god. The temple of Mars was the war office; the temple of Juno, the mint; the temple of Saturn, the treasury; and so forth. Thus every official duty was bound up with some religious sanction. All commercial transactions, again, were represented by their appropriate deity. At the same time, when Roman civilization and enlightenment had reached their highest pitch during the reign of Augustus, the importation of corn from Egypt, on which the Roman populace largely depended for support, was deified, and a niche assigned to the new goddess Annona in the pantheon of Roman worship. This is very much as though, among ourselves, Free-trade were to receive the honours of an apotheosis. But the elasticity of polytheism was not confined to matters of general and public interest. Each several locality had its patron deity—the house and the field, the stable and the farmyard. Every sanitary regulation - even the sewage of Rome - was under the protection of some god. Every desire and every sentiment, every virtue - one might almost say, every vice - of man, underwent an apotheosis. Nay, so far did this passion for deification go, that there was hardly a ramification of human life, and hardly a development of human action, which was left unoccupied. With savage humour Tertullian parades the names of gods and goddesses who presided over the birth and nurture of a child - Edulia and Potina over its eating and drinking, Cunina over its slumbers in the cradle, Rumina over its suckling, Farinus or Locutius over its first lessons in talking, Statina over its first efforts at standing, with numberless others. Amidst this multitudinous throng of deities, the position of the early converts must have been difficult indeed. To keep themselves pure from idols, as it was their most elementary duty, so also was their direst perplexity. No wonder that to the careless heathen they appeared morose, reserved, unsympathetic, in private life. How could they do otherwise than abstain in great measure from the commonest interests of their heathen neighbours? No wonder that as citizens they were charged with want of patriotism. The affairs of state were too intimately bound up with the recognition of polytheism to leave them free.

The charge brought by the heathen historian against Flavius Clemens, whom I have already mentioned, is, that he was a man of contemptible indolence. His indolence was doubtless enforced. His principles left him no choice. In many provinces of public life it was impossible for a man to engage without entangling himself in the meshes of idolatry. Hence it is a common accusation against the early Christians that they were idle and unprofitable in public affairs. The Emperor would be left without an army, urged Celsus, if all men thought with the Christians. This was a gross exaggeration. "How can this be," replied Tertullian, "with men living among you, having the same food, the same dress, the same appliances, the same necessities of life? With you we inhabit this world with its market-places, its shambles, its baths, its inns, its workshops, its fairs, its other places of common resort. With you we likewise engage in navigation, in war, in agriculture; we mix in commerce and in art like yourselves; we contribute our labour to your common good." In vain the Christian apologists urged these patent facts; in vain they contended that, though in some respects the State might be the loser, yet it was more than compensated by their honesty, their sobriety, their orderliness, their benevolence. The charge was not altogether unfounded. There are epochs when even the obligations of patriotism must yield to the imperious claims of a higher duty; when the regeneration of society demands the sacrifice of every individual and local interest, of country, of home, of self, to its own paramount needs. At such a crisis the dislocation of all social and political relations is inevitable. Then amid the birth- throes of a new order the piercing cry is wrung from humanity in its agony and dismay. The great day has come which was foretold, when there should be "distress of nations with perplexity, men's hearts failing them for fear." But then also the hope, the deliverance, the light, is at hand. Men are bidden to look up and to lift their heads, for their "redemption draweth nigh."

And not less perplexing was the position of the Christian with regard to common duties and interests of life. Look for a moment at the ordinary amuse ments of heathen society. a matter of common observation that the Roman people, besides their bread, cared for nothing but the public games. But the conscientious Christian was absolutely for bidden to take any part in these degrading spectacles. To say nothing of the religious character which attached to them, their moral aspect was revolting to the Christian mind. In our own age we hold it a disgrace to our common Christianity that one relic of these demoralizing spectacles should still linger in a European country-the bull- fights of Spain, the legacy of the Moorish occupation. But compare these with the bloody scenes of the Roman amphitheatre, and they pale into insignificance. The slaughter of a few bulls and a few horses now and then would have seemed tame and spiritless to a Roman sightseer. It has been truly said that the number of wild beasts slaughtered at a single festival in Rome would have more than stocked all the zoological gardens in Europe. When the theatre of Pompeius was dedicated, from 500 to 600 lions were hunted, besides other wild beasts from Africa. At the inauguration of the Colosseum, under the Emperor Titus, it is reported that not less than 9000 animals, wild and tame, were slain.

Nor do these instances stand alone. After all allowance made for possible exaggeration, the slaughter must have been frightful. What then would be the feelings of a Christian at this reckless effusion of blood, this wanton infliction of pain, at which thousands of women and children looked on and applauded? But the darkest tale remains yet to be told. The Roman spectator was not satisfied with the slaughter of animal life. He needed some keener excitement than this. Without human victims the zest of such entertainments would soon be blunted. At the games which Trajan gave after his victories over the Dacians, as many as 10,000 men are said to have fought in the amphitheatre. During the year of his ædileship the first Gordian exhibited gladiatorial shows every month, some times as many as 500 pairs of combatants, never less than 150. On these occasions the floor would be strewn with the bodies of the fallen, "butchered to make a Roman holiday." In the instances given the numbers are doubtless exceptionally large; but on a smaller scale such frightful spectacles were constant. Where pairs of gladiators or troops of combatants failed, the thirst for human blood was allayed (shall we not say was whetted?) by the spectacle of condemned criminals mangled and devoured by lions and tigers in the arena. The details recorded on these occasions are too horrible to repeat. Ask yourselves, then, what sympathy the Christians could have had with the common amusement of their heathen fellow-countrymen - the Christians who would shudder to think that they themselves might be the next victims of this in human passion for blood.

But not less in his domestic relations would the perplexities of his position be felt by the Christian. Again and again the demands of polytheism must be confronted and must be denied. Again and again the immoralities of heathendom must be denounced, or at least shunned. Tertullian draws a vivid picture of the difficulties which beset a Christian wife mated to a pagan husband of the conflict between her duties and his exactions. It is no doubt taken from the life; and such complications must have been frequent. We read of husbands accusing their wives, of masters punishing their slaves, because, having become Christians, they could no longer share in or connive at the impurities and the degradations of their former lives. The time which was predicted had come, when "there should be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three"; when "they should be betrayed by parents and brethren and kinsfolk and friends”; when "a man's foes should be they of his own household."

3. I have already occupied so much time on the first two points on which I promised to speak, that I shall have to dismiss very briefly the third—the social influence of the Christians. The Divine Founder had declared that His followers were destined to be "the salt of the earth." The author whom I quoted at the outset, as you will remember, puts the same thought in other words. The Christians, he says, are to the world as the soul to the body - the reviving, sustaining, regenerating principle of its moral and social life. I have not time to follow out the thought now; but I confidently appeal to the history of early Christianity in verification of this claim. "Christ appeared," says St. Augustine, "to men in a decrepit and dying world, that, while all around them was decaying, they might through Him receive a new and youthful life." Society, which was worn out and prematurely aged when Augustine wrote, has revived. And to what is this revival due? To the barbarian races, it may be said, which supplanted the effete Greek and Roman. Yes, to these, as to fresh blood infused into the body; but the inspiring soul, the vital energy, was Christianity.

To substantiate the moral triumphs of early Christianity I might appeal to the testimony both of sincere advocates like Justin, and of calm-judging antagonists like Pliny. But it would be impossible to range over the whole field of moral conduct. I shall therefore single out two points, in which Christianity set itself from the first to work a social reformation, and in which the superiority of Chris tian over heathen morality is signally vindicated.

The first of these is the respect for human life. If it fell within my limits, I might tell how the butcheries of the amphitheatre, having survived the establishment of Christianity, were finally extin guished by the heroism of a Christian monk. But another example is more directly connected with my subject. You will remember how the writer whom I first quoted claims it as a special honour to the Christians that they did not "destroy their off spring." This incidental notice is a startling revelation of the prevalence of this crime. And it does not stand alone. Seneca, writing to his mother, evidently considers that he is bestowing no common praise on her when he says that she did not, like so many ladies of her rank, destroy the hope of offspring. Life, even inchoate life, must be infinitely precious to the Christian; for it contains the germ of an immortal being, the hope of an eternal bliss. To destroy before birth, or to expose after birth - trifling offences, if offences at all to the heathen conscience - became to him a heinous and a deadly sin.

The other point to which I ask your attention before I close is the influence of Christianity on the separation of class from class, more especially on the distinction between the freeman and the slave. Now Christianity did not directly attack social or political institutions. St. Paul directs the slave to acquiesce in his condition, cheered with the thought that, though he is the bondsman of his master, yet he is the freedman of Christ. But at the same time it instilled principles which in the end must prove fatal to such an institution as slavery. nounced that in Christ there was no distinction of bond or free. It declared in the broadest terms the universal brotherhood of the faithful. And in her own ecclesiastical arrangements the Church fearlessly carried out this principle. The slave would kneel by his master's side in public prayer, and by his master's side would receive the Eucharistic bread and wine. But she did more than this. She admitted freely to her highest offices those who had risen from the lowest ranks. In the middle of the second century, Hermas, the author of the Shepherd, writes as a slave; yet he was brother of Pius, then Bishop of Rome. In the beginning of the third century, again, the bishopric of Rome itself was occupied by Callistus, who had himself been a slave of one Carpophorus, an officer in the imperial house hold. The consequence was inevitable. If this principle was once admitted in practice, slavery was doomed. The institution might die hard, but die it must. When in all that concerns the highest interests of man the slave was recognized as his master's equal, the conventional outward barrier could not be main tained. Slavery lingered long and struggled hard. It was reserved for our own generation to see the end. But its deathblow was given when St. Paul declared that all men are one in Christ.

I have thus endeavoured, however imperfectly, to set before you the struggles and the triumphs of early Christianity in its relation to society. I would only remind you in conclusion that the lists are not closed, that the fight is not ended, that the victory is not won. The conditions of the contest change from age to age; but the underlying principle is ever the same. You, sirs, are the heirs not only of the lessons, not only of the achievements, but also of the responsibilities and the struggles of the past. If you would prove yourselves worthy of your name and ancestry, if you would appreciate to the full the magnificent possibilities of your calling, you must be animated by the same spirit by which the most splendid victories of the past have been won. You must not forget that, with all the engrossing cares of your earthly avocations, you are yet citizens of a heavenly polity; that, though in the world, you are yet not of the world. You must be strong with the strength of the master-conviction that the work which you are called to do is not a work of human in vention; that God has sent upon earth His Eternal Word, to take up His abode in your hearts, and to transform you into His own perfections.

Lecture 2

On Tuesday last I reviewed the relations of the Christian to society. This evening I shall discuss his relations to the State. On the former occasion I pointed out how he faced the problems of life: now I shall show how he met the terrors of death.

Living, as we do, in an age when the rights of the individual are loudly proclaimed and scrupulously respected, it is difficult for us to conceive the tyranny which in ancient times the State exercised over the thoughts and the actions of the subject. Not content with levying taxes and enforcing service, with maintaining order and punishing crime, the State prescribed to the subject his duties and his amusements, his religion and his mode of life. We talk much, and (though the term is often abused) we talk truly, of the rights of conscience. An ancient politician knew nothing of any such rights. The individual had no claims which were inconvenient to the State, or interfered in any way with its compactness and harmony. He was only a crank a wheel in the vast machinery; and he must move in regular subordination to the whole. Patriotism was the one paramount virtue. Principles of morality drew their authority and their efficacy from legal codes and political institutions. Conscience and toleration were words unrecognized in the vocabulary of an ancient statesman. Conscience was a possible interference with the demands of patriotisml; and toleration was a dangerous encroachment on the stability of public order.

Modern society is separated from ancient society by this vast moral gulf. We regard it as the in alienable right of every man that his opinions and his religion shall be free. It may be necessary to control his actions or even his words, but he is at least allowed to think and to worship as he will. The State exists for the individual, and not the individual for the State.

How largely this change has been brought about by Christianity will be evident at once. Chris tianity, indeed, protests against the unbridled license and stubborn self-will which to be the special danger of our age; for it teaches that the units are related to the whole, as the limbs to the body, each working in subordination to the general health, though each performing its own proper functions. But, on the other hand, Christianity has emphasized the individual man, as he was emphasized before. This it has done, because it has taught that he is directly and personally responsible to a greater than any earthly power; that all human claims and interests, even the most imposing, must yield to this higher obligation; that he is not a dying atom in a dying universe, a transient pheno menon, a fleeting breath, but a being endowed with an immortal, unquenchable life. Thus his individuality is a power in the economy of the universe, which demands respect; and his conscience is a sanctuary, which cannot be violated without sacrilege.

Now in Rome the ancient idea was pressed with remorseless logic. The magnificent capacities of legislation and government, which distinguished the Roman, tended to the exceptional exaltation of the State at the expense of the individual. Religion itself was cast in a political mould.. The worship of the ancient Roman was essentially political, as that of the ancient Greek was artistic. His deities were political powers; his ceremonials political functions. Religion ' was the mere handmaid of politics. We ourselves can only conceive of theology as in its very nature firm, immutable, absolute. Otherwise it for feits its claim to the title of theology, because the truth cannot change. This was not the idea of the ancient Roman. His theology avowedly changed with the changing exigencies of the State. It was just as elastic, and just as rigid, as the form of government or the limits of the empire.

1. Thus, for instance, as Rome extended her sway over distant nations, she at the same time enlarged the boundaries of her mythology. With a marvellous power of assimilation she incorporated her conquests; but this incorporation would not be complete unless the religious arrangements kept pace with the political. Accordingly, it was her policy to recognize the religions of the subject peoples. This recognition was not a mere toleration. It was a direct acknowledgment of their value, in some sense of their truth. Each fresh people whom she conquered had deities of its own. She accepted these deities, gave them a place in her Pantheon, adopted them into her theology. It is difficult for us to conceive a state of mind in which such elasticity of religious worship was possible. In theology we hold that a thing either is or is not, and that no change of circumstance ought to make any difference here, because no change can convert truth into untruth or untruth into truth. But with the polytheist the case was different. When the Roman had conquered a foreign nation, he held that he had conquered its gods also; and he felt no more scruple in conceding to them the honour of adoration than he felt in restoring a province to a defeated prince or extending the franchise to a subject people. In this way, as the Roman Empire advanced, the gods of Egypt, of Syria, of the farther East, found a resting place in the Pantheon of Rome.

2. And again, when the form of the constitution changed, the theology of the Roman was modified also. I allude to the deification of the Emperor, and I will ask your special attention to this point, not only because it is in itself the most monstrous phenomenon in religious history, but also because it is the very pivot on which our investigation this evening will turn. At the very moment when the world had reached its highest point of civilization and culture, when political and legislative ability were achieving their most signal triumphs — in an age of remarkable progress and enlightenment which was unequalled in ancient, and has only been equalled quite recently in modern times — this portentous development of polytheism was invented. The apotheosis of a living emperor, indeed, might be some what exceptional. It was confined, for the most part, to the provinces, where his worship was the symbol and the acknowledgment of Roman supremacy. Yet monsters like Caligula and Nero claimed and obtained divine honours during their lifetime in Rome itself; and Domitian was wont to be addressed as "my Lord and my God." But the deification of the Emperors after their decease became at length almost a matter of course. "Alas!" said Vespasian, when he felt his fatal illness approaching, "I apprehend I am going to be a god." And thus a single generation saw enrolled among the immortal powers, whom it was required to propitiate with sacrifice and adoration, a brutal sensualist like Commodus and a bloodthirsty fratricide like Caracalla. Nay, to such extremes was the principle carried that any relation ship or even connexion with the reigning sovereign might confer the honours of apotheosis. time it was a child of four months old, another a dissolute and effeminate favourite, who was raised to the ranks of the gods. And the world looked on, assented, worshipped, (shall we say?) believed. Here and there a philosopher laughed in his sleeve; but he too accepted the position. One body of men alone held out against this monstrous outrage on common sense and common decency, firm, unflinching, resolute even to death, an insignificant despised sect called Christians. They refused to bow before the hideous idol which Roman statecraft had set up. They held it better to forfeit peace, to forfeit liberty, to forfeit life itself, to be gibbeted on the cross, to be burnt at the stake, to be mangled by wild beasts, than to tell or to act the lie of lies, to put one pinch of incense on the accursed altar, or to offer one word of prayer to the accursed name. In the interests of human progress (I speak not now of divine truth ), do they not deserve our undying gratitude?

And yet this monstrous development was the natural, we might almost say the inevitable, con sequence of a Roman's conception of religion. On the downfall of the Republic, all the chief offices were concentrated in the person of the Emperor. Tribune, pontiff, imperator, often consul, he was the fountain-head of all civil as well as military power. If not in theory, at least in practice, he was the State. Now Roman religion, as we saw, was the mere reflection of Roman politics. It was not, as all true religion must be, a supreme controlling paramount authority, to which individuals and governments alike owe allegiance. In its very nature, therefore, it would perforce adapt itself to the altered circumstances of the time. Concentrated political power demanded a corresponding concentration in the object of religious worship. The person of the Emperor was the obvious response to this demand. The Emperor, therefore, was deified. His divinity was a symbol of the constitution; his worship was a guarantee of loyalty.

How then did these facts affect the position of the Christians? We have seen that there was a singular elasticity in the recognition of foreign religions on the part of the Roman government. It was tolerant, and more than tolerant; it was broad and liberal to an extent which is perfectly astonish ing to us. We might, therefore, have presumed that under such a system Christianity would have had the fairest field, and the largest liberty. But a moment's reflection will correct this anticipation. From its very nature Christianity could not expect the toleration which was extended to other religions. Christianity claims to be absolute, paramount, uni versal. If it is not this, it is nothing at all. It cannot consent to go shares with other systems in the allegiance of its adherents. The God of the Christians will brook no rival. If the Christians had been satisfied with a niche for their Divine Founder in the Roman Pantheon side by side with the deities of Greece or Syria or Egypt, with Cybele and Isis and Astarte, the compromise would have been Such a readily accepted. It is even said that Tiberius proposed to the Senate to recognize our Lord among the adopted gods of Rome. The story may not be true, but it correctly represents the religious sentiment of the Roman people. It is quite certain that at a later date Alexander Severus did place an image of Christ in his private chapel along with the other gods to whom he offered his devotions. compromise the Christian could not accept. Christ must have all, or He will take nothing. The Roman was astonished, perplexed, check-mated, by the attitude which the Christian assumed. It seemed to him so unconciliatory, so exacting, so unreasonable. He could not rise to the conception of an absolute religion, of a supreme and exclusive God. His only idea of a religion was that it was a national religion; of a god, that he was a local god. With such he knew how to deal: but here was a novel phenomenon. Celsus, the antagonist of Christianity, treats it as a ridiculous notion that Greeks and barbarians, Asiatics, Europeans, Africans, should all agree in the same religious worship. He lays it down as an axiom that men are bound to worship the gods after the manner of their country. It is a flagrant crime in his eyes that the Christians have broken loose from the national religion of the Jews. In this he only expresses the prevailing sentiment in ancient Greece and Rome.

Moreover, the idea of a universal exclusive religion, as it was foreign to ancient conceptions, so also was antagonistic to political expediency. The shrewd courtier and statesman Mæcenas is related to have advised the Emperor Augustus, when he assumed the reins of government, "to worship the gods in all respects according to the laws of his country, and to compel others to do the same," adding, that those who introduced new deities would be misled into adopting foreign laws, and that thus secret conspiracies would be fomented. It was a fundamental maxim of ancient legislation, maintained by the wisest philosophers and statesmen, that no should be allowed to worship any god who had not yet been formally adopted by the law.

And the God of the Christians, from the very nature of the case, could never be so adopted. Hence the large tolerance of the Romans became essentially intolerant where Christianity was concerned. Non licet esse vos — "The law gives you no standing ground; you are not allowed to exist" - this was the common outcry against the Christians, the legal justification of their persecutors, whenever there was a fresh access of popular fury.

But this was not all. Their own religion was forbidden. Their gatherings were prohibited. If the matter had rested here, their difficulties might have been great, but they would not have been in superable. By prudent reserve and studious con cealment they might perhaps have eluded notice. But the law was not satisfied with these negative demands. The Christians were required to do certain definite overt acts. They were asked to sacrifice to the genius of the living Emperor, to recognize the divinity of the dead Emperor. It was common loyalty to acquiesce; it was sheer treason to decline. Their refusal was a blow aimed at the vitals of the State. If it had been only Neptune or Minerva or Apollo whom they treated with contempt, they might indeed have aroused the indignation of the populace, but they would not have ruffled the equanimity of the government. "You worship Cæsar," writes Tertullian, "with greater awe than Olympian Jove himself." "You would sooner perjure yourselves by all the gods together, than by the genius of Cæsar alone."

I trust I have said enough to explain the moment ous character of the conflict. It is quite clear that neither side could yield an inch; that the struggle must be resolute and uncompromising, must be in ternecine. There was an irreconcilable antagonism between the religious ideas of Christianity and the political institutions of the age. It was the instinct of self-preservation which prompted their heathen rulers to persecute the Christians. A far-sighted states man might have anticipated that the political fabric would gradually crumble under the touch of the Christian idea. Hence the most cruel persecutors of the Christians were not always the worst rulers or the worst men. We may be startled to find that Christianity suffered more under Marcus Aurelius than under any of the early Emperors. Mr. J. Stuart Mill regards the attitude of this Emperor towards the Christians as "a tragical fact." It is only tragical in the same sense in which much else connected with this virtuous sovereign is tragical. Is it not an infinitely tragical fact that this same emperor obtained the apotheosis of his profligate wife Faustina, and of his dissolute colleague, L. Verus, building temples for their worship, instituting priest hoods in their names, and in all respects yielding them divine honours? With all his personal amiability and all his philosophical training, he was as much a slave to the system under which he was educated as the most degraded of his predecessors or the most ignorant of his subjects. The deification of imperialism was a primary article of his creed, an absolute necessity of his position. With him it appeared a sufficient claim to divinity in a shameless woman that she was an Emperor's wife, and in a worthless libertine that he was an Emperor's colleague. Humanly speaking, it was impossible for such a man to be a Christian.

Still less could the Christians yield. The war was waged on their side for the most part passively, by careful abstention from politics, by persistent refusal of compromise, by patient endurance under suffering; but their determination was not the less real for this. They felt, for they could not help feeling, the magnitude of the conflict. It might seem a very small thing to throw a few grains of incense on an altar, or to utter a few syllables of adulation to an image; but on that trifling act and those fleeting words hung the most momentous issues which could affect the destiny of mankind. For the alternative offered in the name of religion was simply this: on the one hand, the absolute bondage to a mighty world-power, created and administered by men, a great political engine under whose wheels the freedom and growth of the human spirit must be remorselessly crushed, a gigantic thing essentially of the earth earthy; or, on the other, the free recognition of an eternal First Principle, controlling, inspiring, disposing, condemning, approving the thoughts and actions of mankind, the spiritual communion of the human soul with the Invisible One, who is the absolute centre of Truth and Light and Love. Was not this truly a conflict between heaven and earth, be tween Christ and Antichrist? Could the Christian do otherwise than resist, even at the cost of his life, the blasphemous arrogance of a power which, in the Apostle's language, seated itself in the temple of God, showing itself that it is God? "To the Emperor," writes Tertullian, "we render such homage as is lawful for us and good for him, homage as to a man standing next to God, having received his all from God, and inferior to God alone." "I will not call him God, both because I cannot tell a lie myself, and because I dare not make him ridiculous." "I will not call him Lord except in the common acceptation of the word, and when I am not compelled to use it as synonymous with God; for I have but one Lord, God Almighty and Eternal, who is his God as well as mine."

"A free Church in a free State" has been the dream of more than one modern politician. It is only a dream, wholly incapable of realization. So far as the conception has any value, it must mean that Church and State shall work independently, both advancing pari passu, and neither interfering with the other. But the thing is impossible. The external bonds indeed may be severed for a time; but the State cannot liberate itself from the influence of the Church, and the Church cannot escape from the control of the State. Religious ideas, like scientific ideas, are in their very nature aggressive. Their aggressive attitude provokes resistance and invites repression. Where there is not an alliance there must be a collision. Indifference is impossible; and without indifference there can be no strict neutrality.

And so the gauntlet was thrown down, and the challenge accepted. For nearly two centuries and a half the struggle continued, till at length the persecutors retired baffled from the field. On the Christian side the combatants were twofold - those who fought with their pen and those who fought with their lives - the Apologists and the Martyrs. The history of Christianity in the second and third centuries is the history of these two bands of champions. The Apologists did their work well; but it was the Martyrs who achieved the victory.

And yet it must not be imagined that these persecutions were utterly relentless and persistent. The heathen magistrates, as a rule, were not disposed to extreme measures. When they persecuted, they did so because the political situation left them no choice. But, where magisterial prudence forbore, popular clamour stepped in. An extraordinary drought, or a pestilence, or an earthquake, or a famine, an inundation of the Tiber, or the failure of an inundation in the Nile, was attributed to the anger of the offended gods, and demanding the sacrifice of the Christians to appease them. In vain might the magistrates interpose to moderate the fury of the populace. The position of the Christians was illegal. The sword of the law hung quivering over them; and the slightest breath of excitement would snap the thread and bring it down on their bare necks.

It has been said lately, and said with some truth, that there is no practical mean between the policy of Alva and the policy of Gamaliel — between entire extirpation and absolute non-interference. All intermediate courses must be ineffectual; and, if in effectual, they will only stimulate the opposition which they are intended to crush. The Roman government was not prepared to adopt either extreme in its treatment of the Christians. The policy of Gamaliel was absolutely excluded by their political necessities. The policy of Alva was either too troublesome to their natural indolence, or too repugnant to their humane instincts. At length, indeed, their fears were thoroughly aroused; the rapidly-growing numbers and influence of the sect alarmed them; and first under Decius, then under Diocletian, they resorted to extreme measures. But it was too late. The victory was already won. And meanwhile these fitful, feverish, intermittent persecutions defeated their own ends. "Rack us, torture us, condemn us, mangle and crush us," writes Tertullian, "for your injustice is the attestation of our innocence. Therefore God suffers us to suffer these things. And yet all your refinements of cruelty produce no effect. They rather stimulate the sect. We grow in numbers every time you mow us down. Semen est sanguis Christianorum - The blood of the Christians is seed sown. Many of your own philosophers exhort to the endurance of pain and death. Yet their words do not make as many disciples as the Christians by the teaching of their deeds. The very obstinacy with which you reproach us is your teacher. For who that contem plates it is not instigated to inquire what there is at the bottom of it? Who that inquires, does not embrace it? Who that embraces it, is not ready to suffer?"

But the numbers of the martyrs? Here we shall not find it easy to form any probable estimate. If it was the tendency of ancient hagiologers greatly to exaggerate these numbers, it is not less the tendency of modern critics unduly to underrate them. Nor is this a question of great moment. It may possibly be true that throughout the ten persecutions which ecclesiastical historians have recorded, the total num ber of martyrs was not so great as of those victims who were sacrificed to the ruthless policy of their Spanish masters during one single reign in the Nether lands in the sixteenth century, or of those soldiers who lost their lives on the battlefields of France in one single bloody campaign two years ago. Numbers are no adequate measure of the significance of any great event in history. The architectural effect of a building depends far more on the disposition of its parts and the fitness of its decorations, than on the hugeness of its masonry. I cannot consent to regard the battle of Marathon as a poor and insignificant atom in history, hardly worthy of attention, because the Greeks did not muster more than 10,000 men, and the number of their slain did not exceed 200. I feel bound to measure the importance of historical events by their moral significance and their moral results. And at Marathon I see the magnificent spectacle of a huge barbarian army under a bar barian tyrant repulsed and driven into the sea by a small band of courageous patriots, the champions of a free and progressive race; while the alternative which hung on the issue of those few hours' fighting with those scanty numbers in that circumscribed plain was not less critical than this, whether the freedom and civilization of Greece or the barbaric despotism of Persia was to shape the future destinies of the human race. And in the far more momentous conflict which we are now reviewing the standard must be the same. We measure its significance by the spirit of the combatants - their undaunted courage, their lofty self-devotion, their simple faith, their joyous hope.

It is enough that, whenever a sacrifice was demanded, a sacrifice was ready; that feeble girls and young children in the presence of death were nerved with the courage of heroes; that the Chris tian leaders not infrequently interposed to check the ardour which impelled men and women alike to rush headlong into martyrdom; that the heathen magistrates often desisted from sheer weariness when they saw the crowds pressing forward to suffer death for their religion. "Miserable wretches," said a Roman proconsul, baffled by their numbers, "if you want to die, you have precipices and ropes." It did seem strange that they would give their lives rather than conform, when conformity demanded so little - just to scatter a pinch of incense on the fire, or to swear by the genius of the emperor, or to say (they might unsay it the next moment if they wished) that they were not Christians. It was a new phenomenon this strength made perfect in weakness. It arrested attention, and it compelled inquiry.

For no spectator could look on unmoved and indifferent at these scenes—whether it was the old man Ignatius, burning for the hour when he should confront the wild beasts in the Roman amphitheatre, entreating his friends not to intercede and rob him of the crown of martyrdom, trembling lest he should be found unworthy of this last seal of discipleship, uniting in himself the courage of a hero with the humility of a child; or the still more aged Polycarp, refusing to revile his Lord in that memor able saying, "Eighty-and-six years have I served Him, and He has done me no wrong; how then can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?" and dying at the stake with the words of prayer and thanks giving on his lips; or the boy Origen, thinking to lay down his life for his faith, his mother hiding his clothes that he might not expose himself to danger, and he himself writing to his father in prison to face death bravely and not to think of his family; or the slave girl Blandina, scourged, racked, and tortured day after day to extort a confession of guilt, thrown at length to the wild beasts, but protesting resolutely to the end, "I am Christian, and nothing wicked is done among us"; or that brave Christian wife who, when brought up to the altar by her pagan husband and forced to offer sacrifice, cried out indignantly, "I did not do it; you did it."

I wish that time would allow me to linger over these scenes, but I must draw to a close. Before concluding, however, I cannot forbear to direct your attention to a narrative, which is at once the most detailed, the most authentic, and the most touching of these early martyrologies. I only regret that the necessary abridgment will prevent me from doing justice to this simple and pathetic story.

The scene is Carthage or the neighbourhood; the probable year 202 A.D., during the reign of Severus; the occasion the Ides of March, the birthday of the Emperor's son the Cæsar Geta, when the amphitheatre demanded some human victims to grace the festival and to appease the populace. The victims certain Christians, young men and young women. Among them Perpetua, a girlish matron of good birth, twenty-two years of age, with an infant child in her arms, and Felicitas, a female slave, herself also soon to become a mother. The martyrology consists partly of a diary written by the sufferers themselves while in prison, partly of an account drawn up by a Christian bystander, who witnessed the actual scene in the arena.

Perpetua was arrested. Her father, a heathen, entreated her to repudiate her faith. She pointed to an earthen vessel that stood by, and asked him, "Can you call this anything else but a pitcher?" "No." "Neither can I call myself by any other name than that which I am, a Christian." She was put into prison. "I was horrified," she writes in her diary, "for I had never experienced such dark O the cruel day! the oppressive heat from overcrowding! the insolent extortions of the soldiers! Above all I was racked with anxiety for my baby." But she soon recovered herself. "My prison," she says, "suddenly became like a palace, so that I would sooner have been there than anywhere else."

Then comes the record of a vision in answer to a prayer. She saw a golden ladder reaching to heaven. Its sides bristled with dangerous imple ments, knives, hooks, lances, which tore the flesh of any one who attempted to mount, if he were at all careless. At its foot was a huge dragon, lying in wait to scare away all who approached. She planted her foot on the monster's head, invoking the name of the Lord Jesus. She was helped up the ladder by a fellow-sufferer Saturus; and when she had mounted she was received and welcomed by one dressed like a shepherd, with white hair and of great stature. "So we knew," she adds, "that we must die, and we began to surrender all hope in this present world."

But her father continued to ply her with en treaties. He besought her to pity his gray hairs; to think of her brothers, of her mother, of her aunt, of her infant child who could not long survive her. He asked her to spare them all the disgrace of having a relation condemned as a criminal. He kissed her hand, threw himself at her feet, called her not his daughter, but his lady. She tried to comfort him, saying that she was in God's hands, not her own.

Then the day of trial came. The prisoners were placed in the dock. Again her father appeared, this time with her infant in his arms, entreating her to pity the child. The magistrate joined in his entreaties. He put the usual test questions, desir ing to elicit an answer which might save her. But all in vain. "Offer sacrifice for the health of the Emperor." "I will not offer it." "Art thou a Christian?" "I am a Christian." She and her companions were condemned to the wild beasts, "And," she adds, "we went down to our prison glad of heart."

Then follows the record of visions, simply told, but instinct with beauty and meaning. They would perhaps be held superstitious by some. I dare not apply this term to them. They would well bear repeating, if time would allow.

At this point the interest of the narrative passes from Perpetua to her companion Felicitas. Felicitas is grieved lest her execution should be deferred on account of her condition. Her fellow-martyrs are very sad at the thought that they shall lose so dear a companion on their glorious journey. She and they pray that her delivery may be hastened. Their prayers are answered. A child is born in the prison. In the midst of her agony she cries out. "If you suffer so much pain now," says one of the attendants, "what will you do then when you are thrown to the wild beasts?" She answers, "Now I myself suffer what I suffer; but then there will be another in me who will suffer for me, because I shall suffer for Him."

The evening before the execution, according to Roman custom, a supper was provided for the criminals with a cruel mockery of kindness, that they might forget their troubles in revelry. By these Christians this meal is converted, as far as circumstances permit, into an agape, or love- feast, the symbol and bond of Christian brotherhood. On such occasions the public were admitted that they might gratify a ghastly curiosity in scanning the looks and anatomizing the feelings of the miserable victims. Saturus, one of the martyrs, turned round fiercely upon these inquisitive bystanders. "Ay," said he, "note our features carefully, that you may know us again in that great day of Judgment." They were cowed by this rebuke; they retired; and many, we are told, believed.

The day came. Even the spectators shuddered when these two delicate women were led into the amphitheatre. Perpetua was the first victim. She was tossed by a furious heifer. Regaining her consciousness, she gathered her dress about her, and bound up her dishevelled hair, that she might not appear as one mourning in this her hour of glory. Then she gave a hand to her companion Felicitas, who had also been tossed, and raised her from the ground. Then, as if waking from sleep, she asked when they would be exposed to the furious creature. In her spiritual ecstasy she was unaware of what had happened. At length the signal was given by the spectators that they should receive the coup de grace. They rose up gladly, exchanged the last kiss of peace, and presented themselves to the executioner. The gladiator entrusted with this task was a novice; he wounded Perpetua slightly in the side by an ill aimed blow; she directed the weapon in his hand towards her throat, and so she died.

Here I must close. Even this very imperfect treatment of an important subject will not have been without its use, if only for a few minutes this evening we have realized the presence of the noble army of martyrs, the great cloud of witnesses who throng round the arena of our conflicts, the silent but sympathetic spectators of our trials and our victories.

Lecture 3

On the two preceding Tuesdays I discussed the relations of the early Christian to the world with out, first as a member of society, and secondly as a unit in the State. In this third and concluding lecture I shall consider his relations to the Church. We have watched him hitherto in the heat of the conflict with external powers; we shall see him now arming himself for the struggle in the privacy of the Christian brotherhood. My subject this evening will be Christian life within the Christian body, and more especially Christian worship as the soul of that life.

To the careless heathen bystander this inner life of the Christian was strangely anomalous and per plexing Such glimpses as he might accidentally obtain revealed a state of things of which he had no experience, and to which he could attach no mean ing. He found nothing on which the eye or the hand could fasten. It was all so vague, so unsub stantial, so intangible and elusive. There were no external emblems and no imposing rites, without which religion seemed to him to be an impossibility.

Again and again the heathen antagonists of Christianity give expression to their surprise in the same taunting language, "You have no images, no altars, no temples." The principal squares and streets of Rome or Athens were lined with sanctu aries and dotted with altars; public thoroughfares and private houses were thronged with statues of gods and demigods; the language of the common people bristled with invocations of deities; the air reeked from time to time with the fat of victims or the fumes of incense. When Caligula ascended the imperial throne the festivities extended over three whole months, and 160,000 victims were sacrificed in Rome alone. When during the reign of M. Aurelius a deadly pestilence broke out, the Emperor summoned to the metropolis the priests of all reli gions, national and foreign, and the city was given over to lustrations, sacrifices, and rites of every kind and every country. To all this the bald simplicity of Christian worship stood in marked contrast.

Even the Jews presented a religious problem which the heathen found it difficult to solve. He was perplexed to learn that they had no external object of worship. But at all events they had a temple rich with marble and gold; they had altars smoking with sacrifices; they had priests arrayed in priestly robes. Here was something which he could understand. But in Christianity he found nothing of the kind. A silent mysterious gathering at stated times in some obscure private dwelling was seemed to exhaust the religion of this anomalous sect.

His inference, though strangely at fault, was not altogether unnatural. These Christians, he supposed, were Atheists. Under cover of religion they were hatching some vile conspiracy. He had stumbled on another of those secret clubs, those illegal associations, which his jealous suspicions were ever on the watch to detect.

This strange misconception he persistently main tained. Atheism the indictment brought against Flavius Clemens, the cousin of Domitian, when he was condemned to death for his adhesion to the new faith. "Away with the Atheists!" was the common war-cry of the persecutor. In vain the Apologists attempted to explain. "What image can I make of God," wrote one, "when rightly considered man himself is God's image? What temple can I build to Him, when the whole world wrought by His handiwork cannot contain Him?... The offering acceptable to Him is an honest spirit and a pure mind and a sincere conscience. These are our sacrifices; these are God's rites. Thus with us he is the better worshipper who is the more upright man. By this we believe that God is, because we can apprehend Him, though we cannot see Him." To all such explanations the heathen had a ready answer, "Show us your God." This seemed to put an end to the controversy. The Christian could not satisfy the test. He had nothing to show; nothing which in the eyes of the heathen counted for religion; nothing but a firm faith and a heroic courage and clean hands and a blameless life.

From these notices it is evident that during the early centuries the ritual of the Christians was very simple. One point at least seems clear, that they were not yet in the habit of erecting buildings devoted solely to divine worship.

This, however, was not a principle of their faith, but rather a necessity of their position. corporation they were not recognized by the law; it was therefore impossible for them to hold corporate property. Moreover, common prudence would deter them from any display which might arouse the fury of the populace, or invite the repression of the magistrates. Hence there is not, so far as I am aware, any explicit notice of a church erected either at Rome or in the provinces before the close of the second century. Beyond the limits of the Empire the case would be different. In Syria, for instance, where the kings of Edessa early embraced Christianity, no such restraints would be imposed upon the Christians. Accordingly, as early as the year 202, when a sudden inundation swept over the city of Edessa, destroying the royal palace, the city walls, and other important buildings, the "temple of the Church of the Christians" is mentioned among the edifices thus demolished.. The expression points to a building of some pretensions. How long it had been standing we do not know; but there is no reason to suppose that it was either the first or the only erection of the kind. But meanwhile, in the Metropolis and in the great cities of the Empire, the meetings for public worship would be held in a commodious room attached to the residence of some private Christian. "Where do you assemble?" asks the Roman prefect of Justin Martyr, when brought before him for trial. "Where each man will and can; thinkest thou that we all meet in the same place?" is the reply. "Tell me," the prefect urges again, "where do you assemble; in what place dost thou gather thy disciples together?" "I have lodged," he replies, "over the house of Martin at the Timotine bath during the whole of my present stay. This is my second visit to the city of Rome; and I know no other place of meeting besides his house." A period of a century and a quarter has now elapsed since those first gatherings of the Apostles after the Resurrection; yet still the disciples, as of old, meet in an upper room, for fear, not now of the Jews, but of the Gentiles.

But when the first quarter of the third century had run out, their condition was much improved. The favour which Alexander Severus showed to wards them could not fail to produce an immediate effect. The answer of this emperor, when a dispute arose between the Christians and the licensed victuallers about the possession of a certain piece of ground in Rome, is well known. "It is better," he said, "that God should be worshipped in the place in whatever manner, than that it should be given over to the victuallers." Such a verdict from such lips would naturally give a great impulse to church building Yet notwithstanding, so long as they were unrecognized by the law, their tenure was altogether precarious. The disability, however, was soon removed. About the year 260 the Emperor Gallienus issued a rescript prohibiting any inter ference with the Christians, and expressly restoring to them their "places of worship." By this rescript all obstacles to the multiplication of churches were at length removed.

Thus we find ourselves confronted by a broad fact, which cannot fail to suggest important reflections. During the first century and a half of its existence, Christianity in the Roman Empire had no churches, as we understand the term; while throughout the next half- century such buildings were rare and unobtrusive. Yet all this while its numbers were rapidly increasing, till it had invaded every part of the Empire, and counted its converts in every rank and department of life.

Living in an age when every church and every sect sets apart for divine worship buildings erected with some pretensions to architectural effect, when every considerable town in every Christian country bristles with the towers and spires of edifices consecrated to prayer - assembled, as we are this evening, under this glorious dome in a Cathedral which justly reckons among the masterpieces of creative genius - we cannot fail to be struck with the contrast between the present and the past. Can it be, we are led to ask, that these later forms of worship are a per version of the simplicity of the Gospel? that we have entirely departed from the principles of primitive Christianity in the elaborate development of our architecture, our music, our ritual? A moment's reflection will check this hasty inference which we might be tempted to draw from the contrast. I have already said that this feature in early Christianity was not a deliberate choice, but an enforced abstention. I would now urge (for this consideration is still more important) that it was also a necessary discipline, a providential design, in the early education of the Church. An example will serve to illustrate my meaning. To ourselves the stern pro hibition, which some early Christian teachers placed upon the study of the ancient authors, may appear at once superfluous and illiberal. We can read our Homer or our Virgil without the slightest danger of being seduced into the worship of Zeus or Apollo; but when heathen mythology was still a living power, exercising a fatal fascination over the minds of men,, the license, which we rightly claim for ourselves, might have been disastrous in the extreme. And similarly in the case before us. I pointed out in an earlier lecture how polytheism insinuated itself into every department of public duty and every corner of domestic life. But while thus ubiquitous and intrusive, it was essentially external. It made large demands on its worshippers; but these demands were confined to conformity in outward rites. It did not appeal to the heart, and it did not reform the life. The heathen did not understand religion as a moral and spiritual influence. His only conception of it was as an elaborate system of sacrifices, lustrations, auspices; a multiplication of shrines and a multiplication of deities. It was necessary, for the future of the Church, that the Christian should break once for all with the spirit of paganism. By the stern teach ing of an imperious necessity, he was weaned from this false and low conception of religion. The external symbols and appliances - the buildings, the music, the paintings, and the sculptures — which may be innocent and useful to us, were denied, or almost denied, to him, that, thus thrown back upon his own spiritual resources, he might lay the foundations of a spiritual fabric. This training was to the infancy of the Church what the careful seclusion and the enforced simplicity of life is to the infancy of the individual the necessary discipline of the child for the freedom and the development of manhood. Much that would have been injurious then, is useful-we might almost say, is indispensable—now. But ever and again in the history of the Church there have been epochs when ritual has run to excess, when the spiritual life of the Church has been threatened with suffocation from the pressure of external forms. Then a terrible reaction ensues. The iconoclast and the puritan break into the sanctuary, sweeping away in their indiscriminate zeal much that is beautiful and edifying and useful, leaving desolation in their train. Good and devout men mourn over the whole sale work of destruction; but it is God's own chastisement, who will not allow His limits to be overstepped, and vindicates the spirituality of His Gospel at the cost of much individual pain and no little immediate loss.

Of the simple ritual which sufficed before the age of church-building began, a valuable notice is preserved in the Apologist Justin.

"On the day called Sunday," he writes, "all those who live in the towns or in the country meet together; and the memoirs of the Apostles and the writings of the Prophets are read, as long as time allows. Then, when the reader has ended, the president addresses words of instruction and exhortation to imitate these good things. Then we all stand up together and offer prayers. And when prayer is ended, bread is brought and wine and water, and the president offers up alike prayers and thanksgivings with all his energy (or ability ), and the people give their assent saying the Amen; and the distribution of the elements, over which the thanksgiving has been pronounced, is made so that each partakes; and to those who are absent they are sent by the hands of the deacons. And those who have the means and are so disposed give as much as they will, each according to his inclination; and the sum collected is placed in the hands of the president, who himself succours the orphans and widows, and those who through sickness or any other cause are in want, and the prisoners, and the foreigners who are staying in the place, and, in short, he provides for all who are in need." Justin then goes on to explain why Sunday is selected for these assemblies, as the day at once of the Creation from chaos and of the Resurrection of Christ from the dead. And he adds in conclusion: "If these proceedings seem to you agreeable to reason and truth, pay respect to them; but if they seem to be foolishness, then treat them with contempt as foolish things, and do not condemn to death as enemies those who are guilty of no crime."

This notice requires little or no comment. You will have observed that Justin's description of primitive worship, written more than seventeen centuries ago, contains all those elements which to the present time are held requisite to the complete ness of divine service: the reading of the Gospels and the Prophets, lessons from the Old and the New Testament; thewords of exhortation, or sermon; the prayers and thanksgivings, the minister leading and the congregation responding; and lastly, as the climax to which all the previous service leads up, the Eucharistic celebration, the Holy Communion, which is the supreme act of Christian worship, at once the strongest pledge of brotherly love and the highest means of spiritual grace.

In some points we may trace divergences from the present usage of our own or other churches. Thus, for instance, the attitude of prayer is a stand ing position, following the common practice in ancient times. Thus, again, it is difficult to say how far the prayers and thanksgivings were written or extempore, but it seems that the latter was not altogether excluded. And again, the Eucharistic wine was diluted with water. It was commonly taken so in ancient banquets; and in the Christian festival a symbolic reference to the water and the blood would recommend the mixing for this sacred purpose. But these are minor details, not affecting the main character of the service. In all essentials we are struck with the continuity of Christian worship, when we compare its primitive form in this earliest record with its latest developments as we witness them ourselves.

But I cannot dismiss this subject without calling your attention to the practical measures which flowed immediately from these gatherings for worship. The collection of alms to be distributed to the orphan and the prisoner, to the sick and the stranger, is regarded by Justin as an inseparable part of divine service. His narrative seems to put in a working shape the Apostle's maxim, "He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" (1 John 4:20) Without practical benevolence there can be no true worship. "He prayeth best who loveth best."

How fully alive the early Christians were to this truth of truths, this notice at once suggests. It exemplifies that distinguishing feature of Christianity which we may call its chivalry. By chivalry I mean the temper which throws its shield over the weak, which looks upon inability as its special charge, which finds its highest satisfaction in helping those who cannot help themselves. If we cast an eye over any Christian country now, we find it dotted over with ragged schools, orphanages, refor matories, hospitals, convalescent homes, idiot asylums, charitable institutions of all kinds for the relief of misery and helplessness and want. Such appliances seem to us the indispensable accompaniments of an advanced stage of society; for without these compensations, imperfect as they are, the inequalities of social life, aggravated by a high state of civilization, would become intolerable. Yet when we look back to the great days of ancient Rome, before the example of the Christians had begun to tell upon the heathen, we can hardly see the faintest traces of any such institutions.

Their foundations were laid in those quiet little prayer meetings held every seventh day in a retired upper chamber of some humble quarter like the Trastevere, in the careless, magnificent, pleasure seeking city.

But before the age of church-building began, Christian worship had been localized in an unexpected quarter, dictated partly by a sentiment of piety and partly by the force of circumstances. The scene now changes from the vacant room in a private dwelling to the dark passages and chambers of an underground cemetery.

While the Roman law strictly prohibited the erection of churches by the Christians, it offered no impediment to the foundation of cemeteries. The honours paid to the dead were a main element in the religion of the Roman. He scrupulously re spected the rights of sepulture in the case of others, as he valued them in his own.

A Roman of the middle classes would, almost as a matter of course, belong to some burial-club or guild or confraternity, which provided for the due performance of the last offices over him on his decease. These guilds were recognized and enrolled by the government. The bond of union was various; the members would belong to the same family or the same locality or the same trade. Sometimes the link of connexion would be purely sentimental, or even altogether arbitrary. Each guild had its own burial-place, which was duly surveyed and registered by the State.

The Christians would have no more difficulty than any other body in forming such associations. The Romans, indeed, were accustomed to burn their dead at this time; while Christian sentiment dictated burial as the right mode of sepulture, reproducing, as it does, the Apostolic image of the seed sown in the ground, to spring up hereafter into a new and luxuriant life. But this fact presented no obstacle to their recognition, and indeed would hardly provoke a remark. The Jews also buried their dead, and yet they were freely recognized. Indeed, this had till very lately been the common practice with the Romans themselves. The ancient usage still lingered in some places. It was still recognized by an old law - perhaps disused, though not repealed — which directed that, when a body was burned, one limb should be cut off and buried in the earth.

Of this privilege, which the Roman law of sepulture extended to them, the Christians gladly availed themselves. If they were refused recognition collect ively as Christians, they might obtain it sectionally as burial-clubs. Their religion was prohibited, but their sepulture was free. The first occasion on which a Roman bishop appears in any official relation to the government is in the earliest years of the third century, when Callistus, then Archdeacon of Rome, as president of one of these guilds, takes charge of the catacomb which still bears his name. This was not the earliest, but it is the most famous of the catacombs.

But what is a catacomb? Before answering this question, I will ask you to accompany me on visit to the great Appian Way which spans the Campagna southward from Rome. The Romans were the great road-makers of the world, and the Appian is confessedly the queen of roads. You will remember Milton's description of the pageantry which thronged this great thoroughfare of nations

"The conflux issuing forth, or entering in: Prætors, proconsuls to their provinces Hasting, or on return, in robes of state; Lictors and rods, the ensigns of their power; Legions and cohorts, turms of horse and wings; Or embassies from regions far remote, In various habits."

Far away this road stretches in one long straight unbroken line, across the plain, up the hill slope which bars the horizon, till dipping below the summit it is lost to the eye. On either side, for a distance of ten or twelve miles at least, it is lined with splendid monuments of various designs—some so huge that they served as fortresses in the middle ages, others smaller in size, but all alike, or almost all, betokening lavish expenditure or artistic skill. I am speaking of the time with which we are immediately concerned—the second and third centuries of the Christian era; but even now, if you visit this famous Way, as I have visited it, on some fine bright winter afternoon, when the sun is low in the west, and these dismantled wrecks of the past, rising up gaunt and spectre- like, fling across the ancient pave ment their long shadows jagged by the ancient kerb stones, which still fence it in even now, in its forlorn and rueful state, faded and stripped, it im presses the imagination with a sense of past magnifi cence and beauty, which I dare not hope by any description of mine to reproduce. And these are the sepulchres of the mighty dead of Rome-the Scipios, the Servilii, the Metelli, men who won for themselves an undying name in the records of their country.

I will now ask you to visit a very different scene. You are still on this same road, and about a mile and a half from the city gate you diverge. Then, passing through a narrow doorway and down a steep flight of steps, you find yourself in a catacomb. The contrast is as great as could well be imagined. You have suddenly exchanged the light and splendour of a great Roman thoroughfare, its architectural beauty and its lavish magnificence, for an interminable warren of dark subterranean vaults and passages. This is the Christian place of sepulture, as the other was the heathen. You examine it more narrowly. You find that it is an endless labyrinth of long narrow galleries, intersecting each other nearly at right angles, and extending you know not how far. Here and there (but these are rare exceptions) they open out into small chambers. As you grope your way by the uncertain aid of a torch or a candle (for there is no light from the upper air), you see that these passages are lined on both sides from the floor to the roof with long, low, horizontal niches excavated in the native rock, rising one above another in tiers, like the shelves in a wardrobe or the berths in a ship's cabin. There will generally be five or six of these tiers, sometimes as many as twelve. Each name. contains a dead body.. They are hermetically sealed, and the slab which covers them is inscribed with a But this investigation has not exhausted the extent of the catacomb. As yet you are only traversing its first floor; there is yet another story arranged in the same way, to which you descend by another flight of steps; and again another and another. In the catacomb of St. Callistus, which apparently dives deepest into the bowels of the earth, not less than six successive floors are found. Now read the inscriptions: you will find them ill-composed, ill-written, not infrequently ill-spelt, half Latin, half Greek. Or look at the paintings (for there are paintings here and there in the chambers): they are very rude for the most part, inartistic in design and clumsy in execution, showing neither a cultivated imagination nor a practised hand.

I have introduced you to one catacomb, which will serve as a type of all. If you extend your search you will find that these subterranean ceme teries encircle Rome with a vast girdle, which, roughly speaking, passes between the second and third mile stone from the gates, intersecting the great roads which radiate from the city like spokes of a wheel, and from which access is gained to these several lodging- houses of the dead. In this zone the ground is honeycombed with their labyrinthine corridors and chambers, hollowed out in the soft tufa stone, the deposit of extinct volcanoes in prehistoric ages. Wherever this tufa is neither too hard to be easily and inexpensively worked, nor too soft to sustain when excavated the superincumbent weight, a catacomb is almost sure to be found. It has been estimated that the united length of all these galleries would amount to three hundred and fifty, to six hundred, even to eight hundred or nine hundred miles. All such estimates must be regarded only as very rough conjectures, as their wide difference shows; but they will enable us in some degree to realize the enormous number of bodies which are congregated in this vast city of the dead.

We have visited in succession the necropolis of the heathen and the cemetery of the Christian, the Appian Way above ground, and the Appian Way beneath the soil; and we have marked the startling contrast. This contrast, one might say, is in all respects unfavourable to the Christians. On the one hand you have the free air, the bright sunshine, the blue sky, the lavish expenditure of wealth, the display of constructive and decorative skill-in short, all the advantages of nature and all the appliances of art combined. All here is intelligence and beauty and brightness and magnificence. Can we add, all is cheerfulness? On the other hand, when you dive into the Christian cemetery, you have none of these things; all the accompaniments of the place are utterly depressing, you would say: illiterate inscrip tions, rude paintings, a damp close atmosphere, an impenetrable prison-like gloom. All is monotony, confinement, darkness—and you might be tempted to add, all is despair. But your curiosity is aroused, and you study and compare the sepulchral inscrip tions of these two cities of the dead. The epitaphs of a people or an age are no treacherous indications of its mind. And here a study of these voices from the past entirely reverses your first crude impression. With all its light and splendour, the utterance of the above-ground necropolis is one long wail of despair: there are touching expressions of natural affection, beautiful in themselves, but not one ray of glory pierces the dark cold shadow of death. Hopelessness, utter hopelessness, is traced in every line. The external magnificence is like the jewels and the finery which render more ghastly by contrast the bloodless features of the corpse which they bedeck. Turn to the Christian inscriptions, and all is changed. Neither bad grammar nor defective orthography, nor rude art nor cramped space, nor damp nor dark ness can dim or distort the light with which the con sciousness of an immortality floods and glorifies these subterranean vaults. All here is joy and brightness and hope. The often-repeated inscription "In peace" tells its own tale. The paintings are all conceived in the same spirit. Now it is the dove or the palm branch, emblems of love, of innocence, and of victory. Now it is the Good Shepherd, tenderly bearing on his shoulders the feeble or the maimed one of the flock. And now again it is a heathen subject adopted and transfigured by a Christian baptism. Orpheus, thrilling, entrancing, dissolving the souls of men with the ecstasies of his unearthly music - not failing now to "quite set free His half-regained" spouse, but presenting her, ransomed and sanctified without spot or wrinkle before the Eternal throne, triumphing over death on His cross and in His grave, and thus in a new and a higher sense "Making Hell grant what Love did seek." And even when subjects of a more painful interest are chosen, and the Christian is reminded of the per secutions which he may be called at any moment to endure, they are still treated in a manner which suggests the anticipation of victory. The favourite themes are Daniel praying fearlessly among the hungry lions, and the Three Children singing the song of praise in the flames of the heated furnace. The catacombs signally vindicate the Apostolic law of "strength made perfect in weakness."

It has often been assumed that these underground cemeteries were the common places of assembly for the Christians. This seems to be a mistake. The space is too confined and the arrangement too inconvenient for any large gathering of people. Nor indeed was it necessary in ordinary times to resort to such obscure hiding-places. If he were only careful not to provoke interference, the Christian might generally hold his meetings unmolested in the upper air. But in seasons of trouble and danger the catacomb was at once the asylum of the fugitive and the church of the worshipper. A Roman's respect for the dead would generally secure these cemeteries from molestation. But when the fury of the populace was aroused, even these sanctuaries were in vaded. It was a new aggravation of wrong when, in the Valerian persecution, these cemeteries were invaded by authority, and the Christians hunted down in their hiding-places. But cruelties which the government was slow to adopt were often anticipated by the violence of the people. An inscription from a catacomb, purporting to belong to the reign of Antoninus, gives a lively picture of these moments of terror. Alexander," so it runs, "is not dead, but lives beyond the stars, though his body rests in this tomb. Bending his knees to offer sacrifice to the true God, he is led away to execution. O unhappy times, when amidst worship and prayer we cannot be safe even in caves. What is more wretched than life; yet what is more wretched in death than to be denied burial by friends and parents?" At such times the fugitives would secure their hiding-places by walling off corridors and blocking up entrances, while they provided an egress by piercing some new passage into the upper air.

But the Christian was drawn to the catacombs not less by the sentiment of piety than by the instinct of self-preservation. For here were the graves of the martyrs. It is painful to think how very soon the reverence for the heroism and saint liness of those who had suffered for the faith degenerated into a mere worship of relics. But I speak now of a time when a healthier tone prevailed. The memory of their sufferings was yet too, fresh, and the sympathy of the living with the dead too real, for any very gross corruption of a sentiment so pure and noble. As the survivors met in some underground chamber over the grave of a martyred friend, and consecrated the eucharistic elements on the very slab which covered his remains, carrying their own lives in their hands, and eating their Christian passover, as of old, in haste and trembling, their loins girt and their feet shod, expecting at any moment the alarm which should summon them forth on their last long journey, they could not but feel themselves one with those who had gone before, one in their sympathies, one in their struggles, one in their hopes. The barrier between death and life dissolves before a great crisis which reveals the Eternal Presence. At such moments the continuity of existence is felt. The Christian realizes his communion with the past and the future; and feel ing that he is no more an isolated unit floating in a boundless void, he nerves himself with that strength of purpose and that assurance of hope which the sense of association alone can give.

With this thought, which though old is ever new, I will conclude. If I have succeeded in exciting in any one member of this congregation a desire for a more familiar acquaintance with the records of his spiritual ancestry in primitive times; if I have struck out in one intelligent heart a fresh spark of sympathy with the grand historic past; if only a single hearer has carried away from these lectures, into the fretting cares and distractions and trials of daily life, one cheering memory.or one heroic resolve or one ennobling thought, then the task which I set to myself has been more than accomplished. I could have desired nothing more.